The Poe Estate (20 page)

When I straightened up, the bats were gone, but Dr. Rust, Elizabeth, Andre, and Griffin were standing on the sidewalk. Cousin Hepzibah was there too, sitting very upright in an
antique wheelchair, the kind made of oak with a caned back and seat and big wooden wheels. Andre was pushing it. Jonathan Rigby arrived seconds later, riding his Hawthorne broom.

“Oh, good. You've met already,” said Dr. Rust.

“We haven't, actually,” said the young man. “Friends of yours, Doc?”

“Sukie O'Dare and Cole Farley,” said Dr. Rust. “Friends of the repository. They have a favor to ask you. Sukie and Cole, this is Leo Novikov. Leo's doing great things in literary-material mechanics.”

“Oh, I just like to mess around with spare parts,” said the young man modestly. “What's the favor?”

Andre pointed to our treasure chest. “You think you can get that open?”

“I don't see why not. It isn't cursed, is it?”

“Not that we know of.”

Leo nodded, frowning. He walked around the chest, leaning over to inspect the locks, then adjusted some dials on the machine and waved the wand in a complicated pattern. Nothing beeped. “Yeah, okay. I'll see what I can do.”

He pulled what looked like a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and opened one of the tools. It looked like a teeny, tiny hand. He inserted it into the first lock, frowning with concentration. After a few seconds, the lock popped open. “It seems pretty straightforward, just a little phantasmic resistance. And some rust,” he said, moving on to the next lock.

When the locks were all open, he stood back. We all looked at each other, holding our breath. I wished I could summon
Windy and Phinny. I was sure they would want to see this.

After a minute, Jonathan Rigby cleared his throat and offered, “Sukie, Cole—will you do the honors?”

Cole and I stepped forward and each grabbed an end of the lid.

“Here goes nothing,” said Cole. “One, two, three!”

Together, hearts pounding, we lifted the lid.

The chest was empty.

The Sullivan Looking Glass

H
ow can it be empty?” I raged. “The compass is supposed to find the treasure! What's
wrong
with it? Is it broken? Is it lying?”

“It might not be the compass's fault,” said Dr. Rust gently. “What did you ask it? The exact words.”

I tried to remember. “‘Find Broken Isle,' I think.”

“Well, it did that,” said Andre.

“I'm sorry, Sukie,” said Elizabeth. “It's my fault—I should have warned you. Magic objects can be perversely literal-minded. You have to pick your words really, really carefully.”

“What about
on
the island?” said Cole. “It took us straight to the chest.”

“Sukie probably told it to find where they buried the treasure or something like that, not to find the treasure itself,” said Andre. “Right, Sukie?”

I nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

“I'm sorry—I should have paid more attention,” said Andre.

“Ask it again,” said Jonathan. “Ask it to find Red Tom's treasure this time.”

“You know none of the treasure's yours, Jonathan, right? Since it's not on your island,” said Cole.

Jonathan waved his hand in what might have been agreement—or not. “Let's just find it. Ask the compass, Sukie.”

I shut my eyes. I felt so tired and disappointed and defeated. And mad. All that work and hope, and no treasure! I couldn't bear the thought of Windy's disappointment. She'd been waiting so long.

Pulling myself together, I opened my eyes and said, “Compass, find Red Tom's treasure.”

But the compass just turned indecisively, wobbling here and there.

“The treasure must be dispersed. It's not one, single treasure anymore,” said Dr. Rust. “Phineas probably spent it.”

“I think that's right,” said Elizabeth. “Flint talks about the
Pretty Polly
capturing slave ships and setting the captives free. I wouldn't be surprised if Phineas gave them gold from Red Tom's treasure to start their new lives with. Or to pay for passage home to Africa, maybe. None of that's in the unfinished manuscript, but maybe it was in her notes or her outline.”

“Then why did Windy's ghost tell Sukie to find Phinny's treasure?” asked Cole.

It struck me like a blow to the stomach. “She didn't. She told me to find
her
treasure.”

“Ask the compass
that
, then,” said Jonathan. “Go on!”

“I don't think it's going to work,” said Elizabeth. “It's Red Tom's compass. I doubt it knows about Windy's treasure. Whatever that turns out to be.”

She was right. “Find Windy Toogood's treasure,” I told it. “Hepzibah Thorne Toogood's treasure.”

I even added, “Please.” But the compass didn't respond.

• • •

It was all too much. My dead sister, my lost house, my cursed family. Then the new chapter beginning: the broom, the compass, the ship, the trip, the climb, the corpses, the seagulls, my furious sister—I could still feel her rage zinging at the edges of my attention. All that vast bustle seemed to be pointing to some glorious, shining climax. And then this.

This empty box.

I sat down on the curb, ignoring the ghostly filth—phantom corn husks and newspaper scraps and worse things—and put my head in my hands, trying not to cry.

Someone sat down next to me and put an arm around me. “Cheer up, Sukie. It's not over yet.” It was Andre.

“It
is
. The compass doesn't work. We'll never find the treasure,” I muttered to my shoes.

“Nonsense,” said another voice—Dr. Rust. “We're librarians. When we don't find what we're looking for in the first place we look, we don't give up. We keep looking.”

Andre was poking something at me under my bent shoulders. I took it: a tissue, crumpled but clean. I blew my nose and leaned against him. “Okay,” I said. “Where? Where do we keep looking?”

“Jonathan, you got any useful treasure maps?” asked Andre.

Jonathan Rigby laughed. “If I did, don't you think I would have found the treasure already?”

“Fair point.”

“What about the Sullivan looking glass?” suggested Dr. Rust.

“Oh, now
that's
a thought!” said Elizabeth.

“What's the Sullivan looking glass?”

“From a Harriet Beecher Stowe story,” said Dr. Rust. “It's a prognosticator. The heroine uses it to find a missing will. She looks in the mirror and sees herself in a strange room opening a drawer in a cabinet and taking out some papers, and she knows that one of the papers is the missing will. Maybe if you look in the mirror, you'll see yourself finding the missing treasure.”

“There's a problem, though,” said Elizabeth. “The girl in the story has the gift of seeing. She was born with a veil over her face—a caul. You weren't born with a caul, were you, Sukie?”

“I was very premature,” I said. “I don't know about a caul.”

Cousin Hepzibah said, “Yes, you were a caul birth. So was I. It's common in our family.”

“Awesome!” said Andre, hopping up and pulling me with him. “Let's go check out the Sullivan mirror.”

Jonathan straddled his broom. “Which way?”

“The Lovecraft Corpus. And you're not coming. I wouldn't trust you in there as far as Ms. Thorne could throw you,” said Andre.

“You can't mean that! I agreed to hand over two-thirds of my treasure, out of the goodness of my heart!”

“Oh, let him come. He'll be okay—with Griffin keeping an
eye on him,” said Elizabeth.

“Arp,” said Griffin, leaping to Jonathan's side. Nobody in their right mind would try anything with those gigantic teeth in biting distance.

• • •

I didn't like the Lovecraft Corpus any better on the third visit. The stink was even worse than Jonathan's corpses, and I had a horrible feeling that something was following me—something vast, fierce, and vengeful. The underfoot squishing didn't help.

“How I adore this place,” said Jonathan. “I could stay here forever.”

“One false step, and you might,” said Andre.

“You repositorians. Such a sense of humor,” said Jonathan.

Soon we came to a patch of gloom where shiny objects glinted around us—mirrors.

I peeked into one and screamed. A malicious face was staring back at me: an old lady, cruel and covetous, scowling with hatred and misery. “Who is
that
?” I choked. “That's not
me
, is it?”

Everybody stopped. Elizabeth peeked into the mirror. “Oh, that's just Aunt Harriet, from ‘The Southwest Chamber,'” she said. “By Mary Wilkins Freeman. Aunt Harriet won't hurt you. She doesn't like people messing with her stuff, that's all. Even after she's dead.”

I tore my eyes away from the scowling lady. “What a lot of mirrors,” I said.

“Yes, they're very popular in supernatural fiction,” said Dr. Rust.

Griffin gave a low growl.

“Try not to look into them,” said Andre. “Some of them are portals to different dimensions. Or they can transform the viewer. You don't want to get turned evil, or haunted.”

“I'm already haunted,” I pointed out. Again, I wondered where Kitty was. Still chasing those evil seagulls? The longer I didn't see her, the more I worried. For years I had felt her presence hovering nearby, even when she didn't manifest. Now, though . . . now I felt
something
, that was for sure. Something scary. But it didn't feel like Kitty.

“Are all the mirrors dangerous?” asked Cole.

“This one's okay—it just shows invisible spirits,” said Andre, pointing to a large mirror in a mahogany frame.

I edged around to peek in.

I was right. Something
was
following me—something both as familiar as my own hand and completely unknown. A vast, fiery shape stood behind me, hair and eyes blazing red. It looked as if some evil genius had sculpted Kitty out of smoke and flame.

“Kitty?” I cried, whipping around, but all I saw behind me was the sinister gloom of the Lovecraft Corpus.

“You okay?” asked Andre.

“Yeah, fine.” It was just the lighting, I told myself. Anything would look scary here, especially a ghost. Kitty was my sister. She was nothing to be afraid of.

I didn't look in that mirror again, though.

“Where's the Sullivan looking glass?” asked Cole.

“Here,” said Dr. Rust. “Sukie?”

I pulled myself together and turned. I saw a tall mirror, the kind the people at the flea market call Venetian, with a
frame made out of pieces of mirror cut into fancy shapes and engraved with scrolled patterns. We could have gotten a lot of money for it, if we'd had it in our flea market booth. And if it hadn't been haunted.

I stepped closer, peering into it in the dim light. I felt light-headed, and everything went dim and swimmy.

Then my vision cleared, and I saw myself in the mirror. My back, though, not my face, and I wasn't in the creepy Corpus. I was in my cousin's parlor, groping at the walls next to the fireplace, pressing and tapping at the panels.

The me in the mirror must have hit a spring, because suddenly one of the panels sprang away. I saw myself reach into a dark, cavernous opening and pull something out.

“Come on, Sukie! Come on, turn around!” I urged the girl in the mirror.

As if she'd heard me, she swiveled toward me. In her arms she was holding a chest—the same one Windy's ghost had showed me. How could I have confused it with Red Tom's empty chest? This one was much smaller, with more iron bands and no locks.

“It worked! We've got to go home!” I cried. “The treasure's there! It's been there all along!”

Hepzibah Toogood's Treasure

W
hen we got back to the old Thorne Mansion, my parents' truck was still gone. Judging by the sun, it was around noon. Andre glanced at the newspaper lying on our porch. “It's still Sunday. Good, we got you back early.” he said.

“Sunday, as in the day after we left? But it felt like we were gone for days!” I said.

“Time's funny in the annex,” said Andre. “Usually a lot longer than out here. Sometimes we even come back before we left, which can be a little inconvenient.” He ducked his head under the threshold, and we all trooped down the hallway to the parlor.

I felt the panels beside the fireplace, pressing and tapping. “I think it was on this side.”

“That sounded hollow,” said Cole. “Right there.”

I pushed on the panel. Nothing. I tapped again, pressing each corner separately. Then I tried with both hands, pushing up. I must have hit a spring, because the panel sprang away with a burst of dust.

Behind it was a dark opening.

I reached in and felt something hard and rectangular, soft with dust, and very, very cold. Carefully I pulled it out and
turned to show my friends and my cousin.

For a moment, nobody could move.

“Put it down,” said Andre. “That thing's got to be heavy if it's gold.”

“It's not. Not that heavy,” I said with a sinking feeling. I carried it over to the table and set it down gently.

We all looked at it. I think everyone else was thinking what I was thinking: another empty box.

“There's no lock,” said Elizabeth.

A dank smell came from the dark hole beside the fireplace. Motes of dust rioted in a slanting sunbeam. I felt a strong presence all around me, something ghostly and concentrated. I recognized the fiery fury that I'd seen in my sister, but at a distance now. Nearer, much nearer and more urgent, something colder and older blasted out a longing so intense I thought my senses might break. Windy and Phinny.

But that wasn't all. I also felt that hard, dark, ominous presence, the one that had haunted my dreams. It felt harder than my sister at her angriest. Colder, stronger. It felt as evil as the Yellow Sign. It made me want to jam the chest back in the wall and run.

Instead, I took a deep breath and lifted the lid.

It resisted for a few long moments, then opened with a creak. The chest was not empty. Not empty at all.

Inside lay curled a tiny skeleton.

• • •

Windy and Phinny let out an exhalation of sorrow and relief so intense that everyone in the room felt it. Cole and Elizabeth gasped.

I stepped back from the coffin as Windy and Phinny converged around it, glowing gold and white, blazing with love. Phineas looked so beautiful and strong, I felt a wave of longing. He and Windy leaned over the chest together and then seemed to sink into it, their glow dimming as an eclipse dims the moon.

The hard presence let out a blast of rage and frustration that felt as if it might tear my bones apart. I sank to my knees, covering my face, but I could see the ghost through my hands: A thin man, tall, colorless, with the features of my family, emitting so much fury I thought the house must collapse.

“No, Japhet!” someone cried—Cousin Hepzibah, her voice high and strong. “You don't want to destroy your own home!”

The whole building shook. The plaster in the ceiling cracked. Bits of stone and mortar rained down in the hearth. And then the ghost was gone.

• • •

After a minute, Cole said, “So is the gold somewhere else? Do we have to start the search all over again now?”

“No, child,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Don't you see? This
is
Windy's treasure. It's Jack Toogood. Her son.”

“If that's really the treasure,” said Jonathan Rigby, “I relinquish my claim to a third of it.”

I closed the coffin.

“I don't get it,” said Cole. “Why's the baby in a box? What's the box doing in the wall? Wasn't he supposed to have drowned
and been swept out to sea?”

“We'll probably never know for sure,” said Elizabeth, “since Laetitia Flint never finished writing the novel. But I bet she meant to end the story something like this: When Japhet Thorne killed little Jack, he stabbed him or slit his throat, or something like that—something that left a mark on the body. He was afraid if anyone saw it, they would know what he'd done. So he hid Jack's body and said it was swept away to sea.”

“That does sound like something Laetitia Flint would write,” I said. “She loved blood and melodrama.”

And I hated her for it. Instead of riches to rescue my parents from their problems, all we had was a bitter resolution to a sad, sad tale. If you thought about it, this whole miserable story was responsible for the Thorne family curse that killed my sister.

“What do we do with baby Jack now?” I asked. “We can't just stick him back in the wall.”

“We'll bury him with his parents,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Best to do it before your parents get home. I'd rather not remind them of dead children.”

• • •

For the second time that weekend, I found myself at the bottom of a pit at the top of a hill, throwing my weight behind a shovel. The ground was cold, wet, and heavy, but not frozen. My arms ached. So did the back of my throat, with tears hammering to get out. Crows watched us from a nearby weeping willow.

Griffin scrabbled in the grave, spraying dirt around. “Thanks, boy, but you're not really helping,” said Andre.

“Here,” said Cole. “I hit something. I think it's a coffin.”

With a loud caw, a crow flew down for a closer look. Griffin growled, and it flapped a wing at him disdainfully.

Elizabeth brushed dirt away from a plaque on the long box. “Yes, it's Windy's. Let's put Jack over here, next to her.”

We widened the space beside Windy's coffin, climbed out, and lowered the box into it.

“Should we say a prayer or something?” asked Cole.

We all said the Lord's Prayer, and Cousin Hepzibah recited a psalm, the one about green pastures and still waters. Then we shoveled the dirt back in the grave. Jonathan brushed it smooth with his Hawthorne broom, and we covered it with leaves.

“Look!” said Cole.

Despite the winter cold, the rosebush next to Windy's gravestone was sprouting a bud. It swelled as we watched, growing fuller and fatter until it burst into flower, red as blood, white as death. It smelled just like the Flint rose in the Poe Annex.

Then I saw Windy and Phineas standing beside the rosebush. Sunlight streamed through her, shadow through him; in her arms she held a little boy who glowed like dawn. She turned to me with what looked like my own eyes. “Thank you, Susannah,” she said.

Phineas bent down and kissed me. His kiss was cold, like the one in my dream, but quieter, sadder. That had been a kiss of passion. This was a kiss of farewell.

That was the last time I saw them.

• • •

I was weeping. I didn't want to stay there beside the grave, so I scrambled up the hill behind the cemetery and sat down at the
edge of the cliff, my tears blurring the distant line of the sea, which had retreated since Windy's time, after the river changed its course.

I didn't know why I was crying, exactly. Excitement, disappointment. Endings. Emptiness.

Windy and Phinny had found their lost child, but my family hadn't. My sister was still lost, more lost than ever, and in some ways so was I. Where did I belong? In my parents' long-gone house, where my feet knew every inch of the floor? In this tall, uncomfortable mansion, with my strange new friends straight out of some gothic novel? In the arms of a vanished ghost who loved a vanished ghost who wasn't me? Nowhere at all?

Someone sat down beside me. “Hey, Spooky. Don't cry. It's okay.” It was Cole. “We'll figure out some way to help your parents, even without the treasure.”

“That's not what I'm crying about,” I said.

“What is it, then?”

“I don't know. It's just all so sad.”

“The baby, you mean? Yes. But it was hundreds of years ago. He would be dead by now anyway.”

“No, just . . . the whole sad story. Everything's so empty. Even the ghosts are dead. Windy and Phinny . . . they're gone now.”

Cole put his arm around my shoulder. “Hey,
I'm
here. If this was a real Laetitia Flint novel, you know how it would end? With the two of us breaking the curse by marrying each other. I bet that's how she would have ended
Pirate Toogood's Treasure
, if she'd ever finished it—with a descendant of the Thornes marrying a descendent of the Toogoods.”

“Are you asking me to marry you or something?”

He laughed. “I think we're a little young for that, don't you, Spooky? But admit it. You've always been crazy about me.”

“Me? You?!” I looked at him. I saw the bully's best friend who had made my life miserable for a while. I saw the not-so-bad guy who had spent the past few weeks persistently making himself into my friend. And I saw the silky black hair, high cheekbones, and urgent eyes of his ancestor, Pirate Phineas Toogood.

He leaned forward and kissed me.

It wasn't a cold kiss, like Phineas's. It was warm and soft and
real
—and that made it scary. My first living kiss.

Then suddenly it was over.

With a scream I'd never heard her make before, living or dead, my sister came plummeting toward us like a train off its rails. The cliff edge gave way under Cole, and he fell.